Tax Toke: the Budget Office Models GST on Marijuana

The normally conservative federal institution has done some highly unusual economic modelling based on the question: how much money could the Turnbull government raise if it legalised and then applied the GST to marijuana?
The answer is about $300 million a year.

And that doesn’t even include the increased tax toke – sorry, take – from the inevitable boom in sales of pizza and Doritos.

The PBO, which was set up to provide independent and non-partisan budget analysis to politicians, did the costings at the request of libertarian crossbench senator David Leyonhjelm, who wants marijuana fully legalised.